


You can't choose what stays

by Ostodvandi



Series: Dimilix Week 2020 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22793020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostodvandi/pseuds/Ostodvandi
Summary: After Dimitri's passing, Felix copes with the loss swarming himself with work until their son's coronation. Adrien then hands him a letter writen by Dimitri himself.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Dimilix Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633846
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	You can't choose what stays

**Author's Note:**

> Oh wow this is gonna be sad as FUCK.
> 
> This is set after the ending of another fic of mine, [You don't know how lovely you are](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492345/chapters/48629024), and it's highly recommended you read/have read that fic to the very end, since it spoils the ending big time. Also, beware of very heavy depictions of grief and the grieving process.
> 
> For day 5 of Dimilix week, I chose "Confession".

After years and years of accompanying Dimitri with his paperwork, he has gotten used to the mentally exhausting job of looking through so many papers every day, to arguing with the nobles, to attending to everyone's needs.

This, however, is different. Dimitri isn't on the other side of the table, groaning and overexerting himself until Felix tells him to stop and suggests a tea break, but Felix still looks up when he realizes he doesn't hear a second quill on paper. And then another realization comes: That Dimitri, again, isn't there.

Felix blinks and looks back at the paper. This is no time for tears. He has so many things to plan, so much Dimitri left undone because he was taken away too soon. It falls to him to fix this, to plan Adrien's coronation, to tie the loose threads of Dimitri's ideas for a new kind of administration. 

Dimitri had liked this work fine, despite thinking himself unfit to be king. His mind seemed made for it. So it makes Felix wonder, if the Goddess truly exists, why he died so soon, when he was on his way to improving this broken country. 

'Father.' That word makes his heart nearly jump off his chest through his throat, but it's just Adrien peeking into the room. 

'Is something wrong?' Felix asks, speaking through the knot that has settled in his throat ever since he walked away from Dimitri's grave. 

'I thought you could use a pause. For tea, maybe.'

Felix takes a look at the mountain of reports he has left to check on, and perhaps it would be a good idea to allow himself a small break. He will need the energy for all that work later in the night. 'Hm. Sounds reasonable.'

A small smile appears on Adrien's face. He hasn't smiled much ever since Dimitri died. 'Good. Some supplies of Almyran tea arrived yesterday, so…'

They walk together to the nearest parlor, the one where Dimitri and Felix would spend their tea breaks when the work wasn't overwhelming. The fire crackles in the fireplace, filling the room with a comfortable warmth different to the chilly hallway, and a maid is already preparing the tea. Adrien thanks her, then dismissing her to pour the tea for his father. Then, he proceeds to leave his jacket on the chair.

'Almyran pine needles,' Felix murmurs as soon as the smell gets to his nose. Felix isn't a strong believer, but Goddess bless Claude. 

'Indeed.' Adrien sits in front of him, with his own cup of warm tea. 'Lately I've tried the coffee from Dagda too. I think you would enjoy it, father. It tastes bitter, but it's more energizing than tea.'

'It looks like mud.' Felix takes a first sip of his tea, and the warmth of it in his stomach is comforting if nothing else. Or maybe it's just being away from all that paperwork. 'Your clothes for the coronation are done already, aren't they?'

Adrien nods but grimaces a little. 'I don't think they look good on me, though.'

'You've never been one for formal occasions.' Felix sighs. '...Your father felt awkward about them as well, sometimes.'

Adrien laughs shortly at the comment, without much energy. Nobody has been in the mood for laughs lately in Fhirdiad, and even Adrien’s coronation is going to be small, by the boy’s request. ‘Oh, by the way, father. There’s something I should give you.’ He starts searching for something inside his jacket, and Felix looks at him, genuinely curious. ‘He, well… Father told me to give this to you. But we’ve been so busy, I couldn’t find the moment…’

He hands him a blue envelope, with the Blaiddyd seal on it. It looks like an official letter, except for the slightly shaky writing behind it.

_ For my beloved, the other half of my soul. _

‘I don’t know what it says,’ Adrien says, in a significantly softer voice. ‘But he told me these were the… things he wouldn’t be able to tell you out loud. Something like that. He wanted to give you this himself, but told me that if he were to run out of time, it was up to me.’

‘I see.’ The first thing Felix wants to do is tear it apart, but he can’t find it in himself to do such a thing. He doesn’t want people coming back from the dead like this. It hasn’t even been a month. He’s trying to move on and forget and all those things he should’ve started doing the moment Glenn died. ‘...I’ll read it eventually.’

Adrien nods. ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I don’t think father will hold it against you, wherever he is.’

‘He is-’ Dead. He is dead. And Adrien knows - he’s the one that is coping the best with Dimitri’s passing. He has been drowning himself in Dimitri’s work, Maria has locked herself up in her room and only allows her older brother to enter. Adrien is well aware that his father is gone for good. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to be, father. I know how much you’re hurting.’

Still, he had no right to snap at him, at the son who has just lost his father and suddenly carries a huge weight on his shoulders. ‘I must go back to work.’

‘But father, you haven’t finished-’ Adrien watches him get up and walk away, and his voice comes out as a whisper. ‘...Your tea…’

* * *

There is a drawer in his room in Fraldarius territory, where many old letters from Dimitri have been catching dust for a long while. Felix hasn’t read them, not since his first trip to Fhirdiad to see Adrien for the first time since he gave him to Dimitri, but when Adrien’s coronation is done, and Maria is eating and walking out of her room consistently, Felix goes back home and finds the drawer again.

It’s been two decades. The newest, last letter from his husband rests on the desk. He still remembers the contents of some of them: The descriptions of Adrien’s eyes and hair, Adrien’s first years, his shyness as a toddler. The things he liked and disliked back then. 

Their children stay at Fhirdiad, despite Adrien being against his father’s wish of travelling alone to the dukedom. But this is a private moment between him and Dimitri’s last words to him, nobody else, and the capital is way too crowded for the kind of intimacy he needs for this. 

And even now, he wants to tear it to pieces, to never know what it was Dimitri wanted to tell him. So that there is something unsaid, something he doesn’t know, something he can expect.

Still, he cuts the wax with the Blaiddyd emblem on it, and opens the envelope. He pulls the paper out and unfolds it, but isn’t capable of looking at the words just yet.

He takes in a deep breath. He can still back down. But his eyes land on the first two words nonetheless.

_ My dearest, _

His chest feels heavy, and his thumb strokes the page under it. My dearest, my dearest, my dearest. He can still hear Dimitri calling him that. 

_ I hope I have enough time to give you this myself, because this is important for me. I’m afraid I’m not going to last in this world for much longer, but, at the same time, there are things I would simply be unable to word properly out loud. I hope you forgive me for using this method. _

_ I have things to confess, things I’ve been trying to voice for a long time since our wedding, things I’ve always wanted you to know. They’re small, not very important from anyone else’s point of view, but for me, they are.  _

_ I love you. You already know this, because I’ve tried to remind you of my feelings at any possible chance, so you don’t forget. I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you ever since I was capable of feeling that sort of affection. You’ve always been so incredible, so hardworking, so many things that I thought there wasn’t a way anyone couldn’t ever fall for you, things that I wanted to be worthy of. _

_ And when you saw that side of me - the one you called “boar” for so long - I thought that perhaps that was a sign that I just wasn’t worthy. Our academy days felt strange: You, so close, and yet so far, so silent. My feelings remained as they were before, however, my mind was always somewhere else, thinking of revenge and filled with the ghosts that I still see sometimes today.  _

_ Then it was me who was far, far away from you, despite your attempts at reaching for me. I still don’t remember so much of those days, but I remember your visits to the cathedral in the middle of the night, even when you didn’t say anything. Thank you, for still believing in me after all I did and all the pain I caused. Thank you for believing in the boy and eventually accepting the beast as part of him. _

_ Feelings are a strange thing, and to this day I still don’t know how to describe what we had until Adrien was born. I usually referred to it as lovers in my mind, but, did you see it in the same way? Would that be the word you used about it? Did you give it any thought at all? I knew I still loved you, and that somehow you weren’t deeply disgusted by me. You still believed in me, came back to me. _

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Adrien was born. I am aware of our circumstances at the time, but I’ve always regretted it, I’ve always regretted taking him to Fhirdiad without insisting just a little more. I regret many things that I know I couldn’t have possibly done in any other way. Although one thing I don’t regret and never will is the time we spent together as a family, playing in the gardens of the Fraldarius manor. Do you recall Adrien trying to chew some of the weeds, and how you smiled and said he was just like me? That moment stuck in my mind for the rest of my days. Your smile, so gorgeous and so open, like a ray of sunlight in the middle of the mist. Still, I think he’s more like you. His eyes are less round than mine, brown like yours. He enjoys swords more than lances. Loves Almyran imported tea. Cries like you did as a child. I know you’ve always doubted he is anything like you, but he is just as much your son as he is mine. Have you ever thought about how his and Maria’s wavy hair resemble Rodrigue’s? _

_ I know you don’t believe in a second life, in reincarnation, or anything of the sort, but you know I do. And that I can’t wait to see you again, when our souls start anew somewhere, in another time. Perhaps next time we meet, it will be under the light of the Goddess, in an eternal life without pain. Perhaps it will be centuries in the future, in another Faerghus, hopefully a better one. I want to hope. If death is as you imagine it, if death is nothing, I will confront it as best as I can, but until my last breath I’ll believe this won’t be the last thing for us. I know we will meet again, and I know I’ll love you again, in every time and space. Because I am yours, Felix, and you are mine. _

Only now he notices just how hard his chest hurts, how tight the knot in his throat is, how pitiful his whines of pain are. How much his eyes burn.

_ I love you. I love you with all my being. I love our family. I love the life and the happiness you’ve given me over these twelve years of marriage. Thank you, my dearest, for everything you’ve given me, and I can only hope to have given you enough in return. Don’t rush to meet me, my love. I can wait for as long as you want. _

_ Yours, _

_ Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd _

A tear falls on one of the corners of the paper, and Felix presses it against his chest, crumpling it. Everything around him falls apart as he wails, and strands of blue hair fall around him from his ponytail as his shoulders shake violently in an attempt to contain all the emotions Felix is going through. Dimitri. His Dimitri. His king, his husband, the father of their children, Felix’s destiny. The love of his life. Felix cries out his name, but nobody answers his call.

Duke Fraldarius bends over himself and cries his pain out, until the tears run out and he falls asleep, dreaming of blue eyes and his smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm going to skip day 6 altogether and upload it another day, because day 7 is gonna be chönky and then it's Felix week.
> 
> I have [a Twitter](https://twitter.com/Ostodvandi)!


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